Life

Kona Power Move of the Day: Stefanie Adam

The winner of our X2 PERFORMANCE award credits her success partly to her home country's cycling culture.

by Jennifer Ward Barber

Belgian Stefanie Adam won the competitive F35-39 age group at the GoPro IRONMAN World Championship Saturday, recording the fastest overall female bike split (4:49:54) and earning our X2PERFORMANCE Power Move of the Day.

Adam raced short-distance triathlons from 2004 through 2006 before taking a break to do a PhD. In January 2010 she started training for long-distance racing, and has since began medical school in her "spare time."

The kind of success Adam enjoyed on the Big Island over the last two years wasn't immediate. She fought with injuries in her hamstrings and glutes, which she finally solved last year. "I was really struggling at first, but I just continued trying to find a solution. I actually had my first really good result here last year," Adam says.

Adam, who lives in the city of Mechelen, qualified for her first world championship at IRONMAN Wales in 2011, and won her age group in Kona last year—automatically qualifying her for this year. She had the fastest bike split here last year as well.

Don't expect the short, curly-haired brunette to share any secret cycling workouts, though. She credits her success partly to the cycling culture of her native country. "I cycled to school as a kid—in Belgium it's normal. I also did gymnastics at a rather high level and always went to the gym by bike."

Starting out young is, of course, only part of the story, and Adam says that though she gets in all her key workouts, she doesn't actually log a high volume of training." I don't have the time to look at the numbers or compare with other years," Adam says, but guesses that she trains an average of 13 or 14 hours a week. "[My coach] can really get the best out of athletes with fewer hours of training," Adam says. She adds that his combination of intensity and periodization works well for athletes who combine triathlon with one or two jobs and family.

As for how she herself balances her demanding studies with training? "It's not good for an athlete, what I do," she says. During her two five-week blocks of exams (in January and June every year), she studies 12 hours a day and doesn't train at all. "I'm really very busy," she says matter-of-factly.

Adam has three years left of her six-year of medical school program (to become a general practitioner), a goal she's hotly pursuing. Unless, of course, she goes pro. "If I can find sponsors, I'd quit my job and spread my studies out a bit. I have to discuss it with my coach—it's an idea that has to grow."

As for today—though she's certain she has room to improve—Adam is content with how things are: training on a stationary bike in winter to increase strength, long blocks of strength training, and riding in the hilly southern part of Belgium once a week.

Adam was extremely proud to see Saturday's world championship title back in the hands of a Belgian after 13 years—something that hasn't happened since 1999. "There have been so many good triathletes from Belgium. Marino Vanhoenacker, this year's champion Frederik Van Lierde—and I'm sure Bart Aernouts can one day do a big thing. I think Belgians have the focus and concentration that make us good triathletes. We had 51 triathletes here. For a small country—that's a lot."

And she was ecstatic to be in Kona herself again. "I like this race, the heat, wind, humidity, the course. Many people find it boring on the Queen K, but I love it."